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The Graphic Truth: Spanish political gridlock
Spain's snap election on Sunday yielded another hung parliament, which means no party or coalition has a majority of seats to form a government. So, what might happen next?
Here are four scenarios, ordered from most to least likely.
#1 — Election redo. In the coming days, King Felipe VI will ask the leader of the party with the most seats in parliament to try to form a government. That would be Alberto Núñez Feijóo from the center-right People's Party, which came in first with 132 out of 350 MPs.
Unfortunately for Feijóo, the PP and the far-right Vox Party together failed to win an outright majority. The same goes for PM Pedro Sánchez from the left-wing PSOE party, who also doesn't have enough votes along with the far-left Sumar (Add) coalition backed by two Catalan and Basque progressive separatist forces.
If no candidate gets an absolute majority in the first round, the second round only requires a simple majority (more yes than no votes). And if no government is formed two months after the first vote, Spain's constitution mandates going to the polls again, as the country has done twice following similar parliamentary messes in 2015-2016 and 2019.
#2 — Left-wing coalition government. The current left-wing coalition government (PSOE + Podemos, or We Can, now rebranded as Sumar) could stay in power if Junts (Together), a right-of-center Catalan secessionist party, votes for Sánchez in the first round or abstains in the second round. But negotiating with Junts top honcho Carles Puigdemont might prove toxic for the PM.
In case his name doesn’t ring a bell, the shaggy-haired former Catalan president is a fugitive of Spanish justice since Oct. 2017, when he fled to Belgium after unilaterally declaring independence following a sham referendum. You can bet that in exchange for his seven votes, Puigdemont will demand that Sánchez allow the restive region to hold a (legal) plebiscite — a political death sentence for any Spanish prime minister.
Still, the self-proclaimed martyr for Catalan independence might settle for a return home if all charges against him are dropped. This would have been unthinkable for anyone but Sánchez, who already pardoned the Catalan politicians who tried to secede with Puigdemont, and watered down the crime itself.
#3 — Center-right minority government. This one is a bit of a stretch, but the numbers do add up. Feijóo could try to cobble together a razor-thin majority of votes by wooing the moderate Basque Nationalist Party, or PNV, a traditional post-election kingmaker for both the PP and the PSOE.
To do so, though, the PNV will probably ask for the PP to govern alone. In other words, without Vox, a hard-right party that wants to strip not just the Basque Country but all Spanish regions of their autonomy and recentralize power in the national government. It'll also be a tough pill to swallow for Vox, whose voters might prefer to take their chances in an election redo over backing Feijóo pretty much for free.
#4 — Grand coalition. Imagine the PP and the PSOE taking one for Team Spain by setting aside their many differences to form a coalition government that would represent almost two-thirds of Spaniards who voted for either party. It's been done many times in Israel and most recently in Germany.
But alas, not in Spain, where Feijóo and Sánchez would rather keep voting over and over again than work together. As the popular Spanish saying goes, Es lo que hay (It is what is).
Spain's PM and PSOE party leader Pedro Sánchez delivers a speech on the day of the general election in Madrid.
Who will govern Spain?
Two months ago, when Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez responded to a crushing regional election defeat by calling a snap national election, we gave him slim odds of keeping his job. But we did point out that Sánchez had the survival skills of a political cockroach.
His gamble paid off.
On Sunday night, Sánchez did it again: When the right seemed on the cusp of returning to power after five years, the ruling left-wing PSOE party outperformed its best expectations by improving its 2019 result and coming in a close second to the right-wing People's Party. Meanwhile, the far-right Vox Party lost 19 seats, and the conservative bloc fell just short of the outright majority most polls had predicted.
But the PSOE — along with the Sumar (Add) coalition of far-left forces — also didn’t win enough seats to repeat the so-called "Frankenstein" left-wing coalition government backed by some Catalan and Basque pro-independence parties that the PP and Vox had vowed to replace.
So, what happens next? Good question.
For the PM to get the votes he needs to stay in power, he'd have to negotiate with Junts (Together), a hardcore Catalan secessionist party that will demand an independence referendum in exchange. PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo could also try to win support from the moderate Basque Nationalist Party, which has backed them in the past but would require Vox be out of the government. Don’t count on either happening.
If the hung parliament fails to deliver a government two months after the first vote, Spaniards will have to do it all over again — for the third time since 2015.Vox leader Santiago Abascal speaks to the crowd with Spain's national flag in the background at a campaign stop in Barcelona.
Ahead of the Spanish election, the political pendulum is swinging right
More than three years ago, Spain ushered in its first coalition government since democracy was restored in the late 1970s. But that experiment — a minority government led by the left-wing PSOE Party with the far-left Podemos Party as a junior partner, backed by nationalist and separatist forces — might soon give way to another coalition that'll swing the country sharply to the right.
On Sunday, Europe's fourth largest economy holds a snap parliamentary election abruptly called by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez just hours after the PSOE got trounced in a regional vote in mid-May. And, unless the polls are completely off, he’ll be ousted from office by the combined forces of the right-wing People's Party and the far-right Vox.
You might think that after Italy, Finland, and Sweden, Spain is only the latest European country where the extreme right is on the rise, and that it probably also has to do with immigration. You’d be wrong — and not because Vox is fond of migrants.
Spain's lurch to the right is actually driven by uniquely Spanish culture wars over what conservatives refer to as "gender ideology" and Spanish nationalism (a catchall term for fierce opposition to the Catalan and Basque independence movements).
First, the PP and Vox have called out the left-wing government for going too far on gender equality. Two poignant scandals were the botched drafting of the controversial "Only yes means yes" sexual consent law — which resulted in more than 1,000 convicted sex offenders getting their sentences reduced — and passing a law that allows anyone over 16 to change sex without parental consent.
Second, the conservative opposition has blasted Sánchez for pardoning the Catalan politicians who attempted to secede in 2017, and for watering down the crime of secession. He also stoked Spanish nationalist flames by cutting deals with Bildu, a far-left party which still considers Basque terrorism a legitimate "armed struggle.”
That was the price the PM had to pay for pro-independence parties voting sí to his budget. And it’ll likely cost him dearly at the ballot box.
If, as expected, the PP and Vox together win a majority of seats in parliament, their leaders will be strange bedfellows in a coalition government. In contrast to the gender-fluid and easily offended perroflautas (which loosely translates as "hippies") of Podemos, Vox leader Santiago Abascal styles himself as the classic macho ibérico: a tough-talking alpha male who loves bullfighting and hunting as much as he hates COVID vaccines and city bike lanes.
Yet Abascal is also the polar opposite of his likely future partner, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, a bookish former tax inspector whose calm demeanor seems out of the place in the maelstrom of Spanish political fights. Indeed, the two are so different that Sánchez failed to convincingly merge them into a single political bogeyman during his only campaign debate with Feijóo.
One thing that Feijóo and Abascal can agree now on is that, together, they can beat Sánchez. They can figure out how to govern later.
Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez addresses the media after casting his vote in the municipal and regional elections in Madrid.
After opposition sweeps local polls, Spain gets early national election
On Monday, Spain's PM Pedro Sánchez responded to the ruling left-wing PSOE party's losses in local/regional elections by calling an early national vote for July 23.
We predicted a big loss for the PSOE, but not this bloodbath. The right-wing People's Party clinched outright majorities in Madrid and flipped control of PSOE stronghold regions and big cities — although the PP will need support from the far-right Vox Party. Thanks to the collapse of the centrist Citizens Party, the PP surged by nine percentage points in the popular vote.
Calling a snap election is a surprise move and a gamble for Sánchez. For one thing, waiting six months until December was probably not enough time to turn around the bad result. For another, the PM might be trying to scare far-left voters into backing the PSOE as their best hope to stop the Vox bogeyman.
It's the PP's election to lose. But never rule out Sánchez, who has the survival skills of a political cockroach, an incumbent’s bag of tricks, and a tolerance for risk unmatched in recent Spanish political history.
Spain's opposition People's Party leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo listens to PM Pedro Sanchez speak during a session at the Senate in Madrid.
Spain votes local but thinks national
On Sunday, municipalities and regions accounting for about half of Spain’s population will hold elections that will reverberate on the national stage.
That’s because the votes are seen as a dry run for this December’s general election. Nationwide polls currently show the ruling left-wing PSOE lagging behind the conservative People’s Party. And since neither is expected to win outright, the support of smaller parties will be essential to form a government. The PSOE will look to progressive and separatist forces, while the PP will rely on support from the far-right Vox Party.
With the economy in the doldrums and the general election on his mind, PM Pedro Sánchez is already campaigning hard ahead of Sunday’s vote. He’s been doling out populist favorites, such as 2-euro movie tickets for seniors, normally seen only before national contests. Meanwhile, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijoó has been warning voters that Sánchez is not only killing the economy but that he’s also willing to cut deals with just about anyone to stay in power — including a far-left Basque secessionist party whose candidates convicted former terrorists.
Although this is not a national election, what everyone will be keeping an eye on is the overall vote count. If the conservative bloc gets a wide margin, it’ll give the Spanish right a lot of initial momentum ahead of the general election in December.